If you have ever taken a writing workshop — and, especially, if you ever have paid dearly for the not-so-kind and not-so-helpful ministrations of some Big Literary Name, maybe at some private, pompous university — Theresa Rebeck's slick and witheringly amusing "Seminar" most certainly is a show for you. The same applies if, God help you, you have taught such a seminar and found yourself wondering how to let down the untalented but resource-laden with at least a note of grace, even as you bat away the fearful self-loathing that lurks behind every pedagogical act in which one has a sneaking suspicion that most of one's students are better than oneself.

More hogwash, claptrap and balderdash is dispensed in the name of teaching writing than for any other creative field, although both acting and directing are close behind. One adage (free with your subscription today) is to write what you know, which is exactly what Rebeck did here.

Her play follows a group of four aspiring New York fiction writers as they study with a perceived titan of the field who turns out to be a sexist, abusive, creepy curmudgeon — and it clearly draws from Rebeck's myriad experiences on both sides of the lectern.

A careful reading also reveals a Rebeck takedown of the dynamics common in the writers' rooms that now dominate the upper echelons of television writing and where Rebeck also has spent some quality time, most recently on the debacle that was the self-aware and ill-fated NBC series "Smash."

The typified seminar students here — the beautiful and ambitious Izzy (Atra Asdou), the well-connected but limited Douglas (Carl Lindberg), the class-angry Martin (Keith Neagle) and the Rebeck-type Kate (Mary Williamson) — all tear themselves apart in a fevered melange of envy, insecurity and intramural sexual desire. They act, as their loathsome teacher Leonard (Tom Hickey) thoroughly enjoys, like feral cats in heat, as they yak on about the intersection of interiority and exteriority and other such gobbledygook that can help net one a graduate degree or two. Like workers without a union, they have no common bond as they fight their mutual enemy, all the while worried that he may just turn out to be their friend. In writing, who knows?

"Seminar" was on Broadway in 2012. This Chicago premiere is the work of the nascent but impressive Haven Theatre Company, which has been around for less than a season. That would suggest the big Equity theaters passed on the title, which is surprising, actually, given the juiciness of the cultural dish on offer. In previous eras, "Seminar" may well have ended up in a commercial run here — it's certainly as enjoyable and substantial a play as "God of Carnage." Rebeck gets off some great gags at the arty urban life in a rent-controlled world ("$800 a month? That's like having a grant without having to apply for one"). But things worked out at Haven. "Seminar" was generally and quite reasonably regarded as a tad slight for Broadway, but when you're talking a $32 ticket on Belmont Avenue, it's a lower-risk endeavor and director Marti Lyons' production is deliciously small-bore, which is exactly the kind of production that enhances this particular script, which is about small-bore characters, past promise and Ivy League degrees notwithstanding.

On Broadway, the teacher was played by Alan Rickman, a very chilled and erudite gentleman whose physical gifts limit his ability to play one gone to seed. I mean no disrespect to Hickey, who here does the best work I've ever seen him do, but he is far closer physically to most of the dudes you'll find teaching writing in their tattered sports jackets, thus making his ability to cut a broad sexual swath through his students all the more remarkable. Yet weirdly credible. In fact, Hickey here creates a character so obnoxious, so recognizably egotistical, that you find yourself pushed back in your seat. But you recognize the type, even if it involves looking in the mirror.

The students here are well cast by Lyons: Williamson could yet go deeper (as could this whole crew) but she's already quite moving. Lindberg's Douglas, the rich kid with the lack of talents, is sweet, as such kids can be. Meanwhile, Neagle nails the angry guy who comes from nowhere and knows no one and who has realized, like so many of us do, that the game is rigged.

"Seminar," which wobbles in its closing moments, won't change the world, but neither will any of these characters. All they can reasonably hope for is a carefully observed piece of satire and a good dose of self-awareness and humor, which is precisely what this show delivers.

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